


With Each Beat of His Heart

by Niiknacks



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Angst, Chronic Pain, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, ashes o'reilly (mentioned) - Freeform, canon typical violence (referenced), doctor carmilla (mentioned) - Freeform, doctor carmilla's A+ parenting (referenced), gunpowder tim (mentioned) - Freeform, jonny's fave hobby may be avoiding introspection but I will make him, light body horror, medical experimentation (referenced), nastya rasputina (mentioned) - Freeform, no beta we die like mortals, someone hug him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24437296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niiknacks/pseuds/Niiknacks
Summary: In a quiet moment, Jonny is forced to think about why he behaves as he does.Short and angsty, based on a hc that the mechs have chronic pain because of their mechanisms. I'm sad about Jonny D'Ville
Comments: 8
Kudos: 108





	With Each Beat of His Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Please check the tags for content warnings!

There is a dull ache in his chest that pulses with every beat of the mechanical heart embedded in his chest. It aches when he draws breath, too, and when he lets the air rush out of his lungs when he can’t hold it any longer. He can feel it beating in his lips, his fingertips, the base of his skull and the soles of his feet, no matter how tightly he laces his boots.

Most of the time he can ignore it. If he throws himself into a fight or bottle of liquor with enough vigour, sometimes he can pretend he’s forgotten about the throbbing under his ribcage for a few precious minutes, but in the rare moments that the stillness and silence he spends so much of his time running from catches up with him, that ache is all he can feel. 

A bullet’s always the best remedy, really. 

It’s in the instant of white hot pain that blooms under his skin when the bullets rip into him that he finds the best distraction. For just a few seconds, before his body begins to stitch itself back together, its the only thing he can feel. In those moments, as the burning pain lances through him, it’s somehow comforting to know that at least that pain is _different._ That at least that pain will fade eventually.

Of course, it sours the sensation a little to know that it’s the same mechanism he’s trying to forget that’s sewing his wounds back up, but he’s got very good at pretending not to care. 

He’s had a lot of practice. 

He wonders, sometimes, if the others are the same. If what was replaced in each of them fights as hard against what remains as it does in him. When he allows the self pity to creep in, Jonny tells himself that the Doctor would have improved the process by the time she got to them, that he’s alone in this, that the others are the lucky ones. He knows it’s bullshit, of course. The Doc didn't care enough to give a damn about side effects like this, so long as she got her results.

Another part of him aches too, deeper even than his mechanism. A tiny part of him that longs to go find Nastya in the Aurora’s lower levels and ask if she always feels the cold of the quicksilver in her veins; to corner Ashes and know if their muscles pull as tightly against their metal lungs as his do against his heart; to ask how Tim deals with the grinding of metal within his eye sockets. To know with certainty that it’s _not just him._

He won’t, though. He tells himself it’s because it isn’t like they’re any more well adjusted than he is. What’s the point of asking for advice from a bunch of fuckups? It isn’t like it would change anything. He crushes the spark of fear the thought generates with an iron fist and thinks about the bottle of vodka he hid in the vents above the kitchen. Maybe he should find someone to shoot.

With any luck, they might even shoot back.

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling them Jonny D'Ville feels, so I thought I'd share them. You're welcome? I'm sorry. 
> 
> My first fic on the internet, so I'm still figuring out AO3. If I've missed any tags just let me know.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
